~ Life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get!

Hello, my second quarter, I am Xiao

The first 1/8 MBA life has just ended two weeks ago with…haha, awesome:) This is the first time for me to read so many books just within 2 months!!!!!! I am proud of myself ^_^(generally, hmm, guilty to admit, I might spend a whole semester to read as much as I am doing now…)

Life and study, oh yes, and foooooood here are quite different from my past 26 years. More demanding, more challenging but also more colorful. I like boston so much – I like the people here, beautiful landscape and food (really enjoy pasta and pizza, but unluckily these have made me gain 9lbs since I came to the states) . Hehe, exited about my second quarter:)

Well, something about my different 26 years:-

I was born and grew up in Shanghai, the biggest city of China. Does it look very similar to your NYC?~~haha, it has a nick name called East NYC, a famous sleepless city in Asia:)

As the single child in my family, I have very close relationship with my parents. Thus, unlike you guys, I live with my parents even after I started working. And my mom is a great cooker!! I like the food she prepares every day.

However, I went for boarding school since my middle school. A weird circle lol: living with parents-living outside at school-living back with parents. My middle school is a strict academic school. There, I met my favorite maths teacher and became interested in quant since then. My maths teacher is an awesome guy who teaches me a lot and helps me win the first prize of the national maths competition. The first prize and its later opportunity of representing China in Asian Maths Olympic Games help me get enrolled in my high school without entry examination:) Then, the later story is simple, best high school to best university, boring but it is the truth. Yet, I met a lot of friends throughout the way and some of them have even become my classmates for more than 11 years. (Oops, we all live in a standard but boring life:()

After my graduation from campus, I went for Ernst & Young, working as a consultant for 3 years. Work there may not be interesting, but on the other side, it provides me a lot of opportunities to travel around the whole China. Contacting with clients from different areas is interesting experience.

Is this my life??? Nope!! Besides study and work, I have plenty of other interests and hobbies:-

1. Photograph: Although not good at photographing, I still like it so much. It helps me memorize all the happiness in my life. And the thing I like most from photographing is that I like making difference of the pictures taken at different time. Here are some pics of my friends, very interesting. You can witness the changes as time flies…

2. Cooking: Haha, I like cooking and eating. For your reference, besides this one, I also upload a few Chinese food menu. Enjoy Asian food lol:)

3. Movies/drama. Watching movies / dramas is fun. And living with an active dramatist during my whole 4-year undergraduate is amazing!

4. calligraphy: I am not good at drinking…the time you guys spent at bar for fun had been spent on calligraphy when I was in China. It was pushed by my mom!!! (I like going to the bar too….. )Yet, thanks to my mom’s push, I am now with good Chinese hand writing and can sometimes pretend to be a highly educated girl. (good hand writing is almost equal to a well-educated professor in China) And, admittedly, I come to like calligraphy now.

I understand where you are coming from… at times I know how the formulas and concepts work but I honestly cannot understand what the professor is asking for in the exam or even in recitation at times… I always thought my English was pretty good, I guess not now…

I once discussed this issue with Pete, and he suggested the only way to solve this problem is by practicing. Practice makes perfect. As you get used to the expression of the questions, you will know how to do the problems… but the fact is that, i am already barely having time for sleep….

Hmm, case is interesting. Yet, considerign the huge amounts of time spent in each case and the language barrier ( unluckily, I am a slow english reader), it might also be suffering to us internatinal students.

You wont the 1st prize in a national math competition in China!!!! Amazing… and I love your outlook on photography! I also love pictures because they help me remember all the good times in my life… capturing the moments that are so rare… I wonder if you can do Arabic calligraphy too… maybe I can show you some words and you can draw them? That would be so cool! How about we make a calligraphy Boston College logo in Arabic?? Then we can print it on a t-shirt 😀